Marching back: ROTC makes a comeback on UNLV campus

Jennifer Knight

Monday, Feb. 18, 2002 | 10:37 a.m.

Tom Welch, 18, comes from two generations of soldiers, so his future in the military was just a question of when.

The events of Sept. 11 answered that question, and Welch walked into his college's Reserve Officer Training Corps office to become a third-generation military man this spring.

"The attacks made it clear that I wanted to be in the military," said Welch, a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "This just cemented it."

The local ROTC programs have experienced a small spike in enrollment following the attacks. Thirteen students have joined the Army ROTC programs at UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada, for an enrollment of 59 this year. That's a marked increase from last year when enrollment last year dropped from 52 to 34 cadets.

Southern Nevada's ROTC programs are making a comeback after being eliminated in 1992 as part of the nationwide military drawdown. They were reinstated with the help of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 1998 and began with eight students, Maj. Ross Bryant, assistant professor of military science at UNLV, said.

Nationwide, all four ROTC branches educate 200,000 students. The four-year training program prepares students for military careers. Graduates join as commissioned officers.

But having a military training operation on a college campus can be a strange sight in the academic world. Students dressed in camouflage uniforms carrying rubberized weapons caused some passersby to glare during a recent exercise on UNLV's campus.

"A lot of people on campus don't like us," Cadet Jaspen Stevenson, 24, said. "We just try not to pay attention to that kind of stuff."

Stevenson said some people on campus have been scared by the exercises, not knowing they didn't have real guns. The police have been called twice over the past month, she said.

But things have changed mostly for the good. Despite the police calls, the gawkers and some off-handed comments made during a teach-in Sept. 21 criticizing possible military action, there have been good reactions to the ROTC students.

"Those I've talked to have commended me for being in the Army," Lawrence Zuiderweg, 19, said.

The kudos have come from unexpected sources.

Weeks after the attacks, a group of ROTC students were headed to the desert for a training exercise. When the group stopped for a bite to eat, a man who said his son was also in the military paid for the meal.

"He said to us, 'I just want to do this for you. I hope somebody somewhere buys a meal for my son,"' Bryant said.

Interest in ROTC programs nationwide is on the rise. Enrollment in Army ROTC programs across the nation increased from 28,470 in 2001 to 29,818, Paul Kotakis, a spokesman for the national office in Fort Monroe, Va., said.

Recruiters say that the real effects of Sept. 11 on ROTC enrollments may be not be known until this fall, when a new crop of freshmen arrives.

"Obviously the effect of 9-11 will be felt in the program," Kotakis said. "But for those who were already enrolled, the attacks just validated their purpose for being in the program."

Most of the new recruits at local colleges reported that they had already planned to join the program, but the attacks either hastened their decision or reaffirmed it.

Bryant said the attacks had personal meaning for him: He knew 20 people out of the 189 who died in the attack on the Pentagon.

One other thing has changed for him, too, he said. People seem to notice his presence when he's in uniform.

One day while he was filling his car up at a local gas station, the clerk commented that it was nice to have him in the store, Bryant said.

"I told her, 'The sad thing is, I've been coming here for two years, you just haven't noticed me.' "